"Oh, nothing," said Timberly, smiling satirically. "We are just amused a little bit at your posing as a heavy poler. That's all."
But Jack only frowned, and turned again to Stacy, who knew the others were paying attention, and so made answer, "Don't intend to read anything. I've quit taking notes on the lectures, too. A syllabus at the end of the term will have to do me." That ought to show them.
Nobody said anything for a moment, and when he looked up he could not tell from their faces what they thought of his remark, though Linton seemed to wear a quizzical smile. But then that fellow always seemed to be sneering or else looking oblivious.
Then Smith, who was a track athlete, went on with his conversation with Pope. He was venturing the opinion that Princeton's prospects for the spring were poor. He was a young man who thought he had a dignity, and he liked to have people pay attention to what he said. He had reason to suppose that his opinions on athletics amounted to something. So he was rather astonished, as were Stehman and the rest of the table, when Stacy's high voice burst in with, "No, now, you don't mean it, Smithie. You are joking, aren't you?" There was no reason why he should not be familiar and play horse like the rest.
At first there was such a pause that he felthimself blush, and he feared he had offended Smith, who had stopped talking and was blushing a little, too. Then suddenly Timberly burst out with a snorting laugh, and then Davis and then the whole crowd, even Linton, and Stacy himself, because he had made such a hit, laughed modestly, though still blushing, at which they all laughed still more. He did not know it was so funny as all that. That was not half as witty as he could be, as he would show them.
But just then Stehman interrupted and claimed attention. "Timber," he called down the table, "I heard a new one to-day on Jimmie McCosh." Stehman then told a story about the Doctor's falling on the slippery stones on McCosh walk, and what he said when he could not get up. Like most imitations of dear old Jimmie's Scotch, Stehman's sounded like a poor Irish brogue. It was not a very good story, but the fellows imagined how it would sound if told well, and then laughed because it was good old Jack Stehman. Stacy thought he could do better than that.
Everything was quiet. Now was the time. He cleared his throat. "Say, fellows, this is the way the president talks in chapel." His voice was high and unnecessarily loud. He arose and took hold of the lapels of his little coat andraised his brows and compressed his lips and looked side wise through his glasses and repeated very quickly in a strange voice, "The seven Arabic numerals do not form a sufficient basis for crystallization about which the cardinal virtues may cluster." Then he promptly sat down and began to puff vigorously upon his big cigar.
The fellows smiled surprisedly and looked at each other. Then they laughed. They stopped a moment; then one by one they began to laugh again, as if the thing were growing on them. Finally they roared and kept on roaring.
At home they always applauded when he got that off, although his mother thought it wrong in him, but they did not pound on the table and scream and slap each other on the back, as these fellows were doing now. It must have been because this audience was more familiar with the original. But he hardly heard them.
"Say, fellows, I'll tell you the story of the little boy who stole the jam!" he exclaimed, excitedly. Before Stehman and one or two others of this same crowd he had tried once in freshman year to tell this same story, and failed for lack of courage. He was not the least bit frightened this time.
He leaned back in his chair and imitatedthe boy's voice and blew smoke between sentences and gesticulated with the cigar in his hand; and when he had finished everyone pounded and screamed and applauded as before, while he only shut his lips tight and tried to look serious, as all goodraconteursshould. Would not this be fine to write to Fannie about?
"Good! Good!" they were shouting to him. "Give us another, Stace. You're a good one. Do the Dr. Patton act again. These fellows haven't seen it."
"No, we haven't seen it. Let her go."
Stacy raised his eyes from the table-cloth. Those of the juniors that had left and some of the seniors, hearing the racket, had come in to see what was up. The piano had ceased. Fellows were pushing into the room with cues in their hands and their coats off. Some of them were sitting on the table. Some had their arms about one another's shoulders. Leaning against the door-post, with a pipe in his mouth and a merry twinkle in his eye, stood a senior named Bangs, whom Stacy, in freshman year, feared more than anything on earth. He had never, until this moment, forgiven him.
Before Bangs and over half the active membership of the club did little Stacy, who used to cross the street to avoid being looked at, jumpup on a chair and with greater gusto than ever, with his funny little mouth twisted up, with his voice strained to produce a peculiar resonance, repeat part of a sermon once preached by the president of the college. And when he had finished, his hearers were doubled up on the floor with laughter.
Throughout all this Stehman alone seemed unappreciative. He laughed in a nervous way. Once he said, "Let's go sit by the fire." Could it be possible that his good friend Jack, who was accustomed to being the most popular, was—no, he would not think that of him.
"Do something else," they were crying. "Go on. Go on. Please!"
If he wanted to he could double them up once more, this time with an imitation of Jimmie Johnson's stuttering, but he absolutely declined. He knew that brevity was the soul of wit. "Stacy, you ought to go on the stage!" one of the seniors exclaimed.
But he only answered, "Naw. That don't amount to anything. Shoot." And then they all began laughing once more at the mere remembrance of it.
Jack arose to go. Stacy picked up the huge cigar, which had gone out, and jamming it firmly between his teeth, strode after his host. Hewalked past the fellows, who were still laughing, as modestly and with as unconscious an expression as Jack Stehman himself wore on the football field when running back to his place after making a touch-down and the crowd was cheering.
In the hall he said, "I think I'll have to go now, Jack." His voice was joyously nervous. He could not hold in much longer.
"Must you go, Ray?"
"Yes. I must finish a letter. Good-night, Jack, old man. I've had a bully time."
The buttons was helping him on with his coat, and he repeated, "Good-night, Jack, old man. I've had a bully time." His voice nearly broke.
Then the door closed, and Stehman, who was angry, turned toward the convulsing crowd by the fire and said, in a calm voice, "I greatly admire what you fellows have done this evening. You are indeed typical Princeton men. Oh, you have the true spirit."
"Fine poler, your quiet, inoffensive, young friend," some one rejoined with a chuckle.
"Not ashamed—as you were reminding us the other night—not ashamed of being a poler either," said the fellow Stehman had jumped on for being a kid.
"Wow!" cried Bangs, with a groan of laughter. "I haven't had so much horse since sophomore year."
Then Linton spoke. "Jackie, dear, don't look that way. It's not nice. And do not chew a rag because your little poler did not develop as you wanted him to. You must learn to part with your ideals——"
"And, Jack, you must admit," interrupted Davis, "that it was absurdly comical. It was mean to laugh, but how could we help it? His standing up there and kicking up his poler antics, like an old cow, and thinking all the time that he was——"
The rest was cut short by Stehman's bringing his big fist down upon a table by the window. "But, Dougal," he thundered, "that doesn't make any difference. He was my guest. Because he tried to bring himself down to our tone you fellows let him make a fool of himself, and sat there and laughed at him, like a set of snobs. Jackson, get my coat."
"You needn't talk so loud," growled a sarcastic-faced post-graduate. "The people across the street don't care to hear about it."
"Don't go away with your back up, Jack," Linton shouted after him good-naturedly. "And you need not worry about little Stacy. The besttime he ever had in college was with us snobs here to-night, and he's probably chuckling to himself now on his way across the campus about the big tear he made."
But little Stacy was not doing anything of the sort. One of his new Blucher shoes had come untied when he had jumped up on the chair to do the president act, and he stopped to tie it by the light of the club window. And it was wide open.
This story begins with a girl. She was small and had a nose that turned up and a quiet appreciation of the ridiculous. All summer long she sat on the sand without a veil and was nice to two little boys in clean duck trousers and buzz-saw hats which blew off sometimes.
One of these was eighteen years old and had a complexion that women envied and felt like kissing. He was small and dainty and smelt like good soap. His name was Valliant. The other was a little older, considerably bigger, and much more self-assertive. Except for his duck trousers he wore orange and black with his class numerals on everything. That might have made but little difference. But the girl decided that she would like it more if they would become angry for her sake, which they one day did.
After that whenever the little one was alone with her his voice was soft and his manner thoroughly abject. She liked this. She likedhis sweet-and-cleanness also. The other, whose name was Buckley, had an untamed, defiant way of tossing his shoulders, like an unbroken stallion. She liked that still more. When she sat out dances with him, she put him where the arc-light on the veranda would play upon his eyes, which were good, and talked about the other boy's nice manners.
Best of all she liked to have both about her at once. The sophomore breathed lungfuls of cigarette smoke and told her how hard his class would haze the freshman in the fall, and how cold the canal was on a frosty night, while the sub-freshman only gazed out over the legs and arms splashing and gleaming in the surf, and tried to smile in a way to show Buckley that he was not taking offence. For what could a sub-freshman do?
Then the girl would poke the end of her red parasol in the sand and say: "I think it would be just too mean of you to haze Mr. Valliant. He is such a good friend of mine." This was because it is woman's nature to take the part of the weak and oppressed.
But one day the sophomore made a remark about "pretty pink-cheeked boys," which had been better left unsaid. Then arose the younger one and shaking impressively a slender,pink-nailed finger, he spoke. "You had better not try to haze me, Will Buckley. Do you hear what I say?" Which was the very worst thing he could have said. Besides it was decidedly fresh.
But he was very much in earnest and quite angry and his young voice broke in the middle. The sophomore laughed mirthfully and the girl became genuinely sorry for a moment, despite the humor of the situation; and as she watched his dainty legs retreating over the dunes toward the cottages it repented her of having stirred up enmity between the two, and she resolved from that day to make up for it. This she did by being always good to the little one in the presence of the big one, which seems short-sighted in her.
Thus did one small girl amuse herself throughout the week, and then, when Saturday evening came and the children were left to burn cigarettes by themselves, she entertained the men with it, who came down to spend Sunday. For her nose turned up and she was good at mimicry. She won't be mentioned again.
In the glorious old days of untrammelled class activity when everyone recognized that there were certain duties owed the freshman by thesophomore class, as Hall talk was due them from the upper-classmen (another good old custom now defunct), you had only casually to drop word to a freshman on the way to recitation to wait for you when night came, back of Witherspoon—as you would bid a classmate come to a spread in your room—and he would turn up promptly and smilingly, take his little dose meekly and cheerfully, and go to bed a better boy for it and brag about it every time he dined out in Christmas holidays. But all that is changed now.
Even in the days of which this is written, which were only comparatively modern times, one had to play a very careful game to do any hazing. The freshman was beginning to hesitate about putting out his light when you yelled up at him from the street. People were putting strange notions in his head. He was beginning to think he had a personality. They were telling him he had rights. The old glory had departed along with Rushes and Midnight Cane Sprees and Horn Sprees and Fresh Fires to make room for a University spirit and linen shirts. At the present rate of retrogression—mark the prediction—it will not be many years before the freshman will be allowed to wear the orange and black and the sophomore a silk hat!When that day comes, may it be that a certain Old Grad. will have attended his last reunion.
Twice had Buckley waited near the house where Valliant ate his dinner. But it's quite light after dinner in September. He had gone to the house where he roomed, and asked the landlady if any of the gentlemen wanted to join the Y. M. C. A. But that, like theNassau Lit.andPrincetoniansubscription-list-game, had been played out; the door was closed in his face. Then for three successive nights he waited in an alley near by, and on the third night the freshman came. But with him an upper-classman friend.
Buckley said things and kept in the shadow. But the freshman had good eyes and said as he took out his keys, "Oh, is that you, Mr. Buckley? Why, how do you do? Aren't you coming up to see me?" That was horribly fresh.
"Not now," Buckley growled. "Which is your room?" Excusing himself from the upper-classman, who was enjoying all this, the freshman led Buckley into the alley-way, and pointed up at the wing of the house. It was a large one and many people lived in it. "That room up there next to the one with a light in it. See?" he said in polite, friendly tones. This was decidedly fresh.
Buckley said he would come up later on in the evening, which, of course, he had no intention of doing, and saying "Good-night" good-mannerly enough, he slinked off, and the freshman took his friend up the stairs, which smelled of damp carpets.
The next night Buckley got his gang together. They blew smoke in one another's faces and decided that a little exhibition of oarsmanship in a basin of water with toothpicks would do to warm up with. Then a cross-country jaunt would be appropriate, running, walking, and crawling to the canal. Here, as the freshman was proud of his shape, he would be given an opportunity of displaying it while the moon reflected in the water. And, if he felt cold after that, he could climb a telephone pole for exercise—they didn't want to be inconsiderate of his comfort—and sing "Nearer my home to-day, to-day, than I have been before," at the top of it. Then with a few recitations and solos on the way back he could be put to bed. This would be a good night's work.
It was nearly two o'clock when they carried the ladder into the alley-way. They laid it down in silence.
For several reasons this was to be a right nervy go. A young professor and his youngwife had a suite of rooms in the house. But it wasn't that which troubled them. This was. The moon shone full and strong upon the clear, blank wall of the house, and it was in plain view from a certain spot a distance of about two blocks away. Across this spot a certain owl-eyed proctor was pretty sure to pass and repass off and on all night.
That was the reason they were sitting on the ladder waiting for a signal from Colston, who was over by the certain spot watching for the certain proctor.
"Buck, which is the freshman's room?"
"It was the one next to the light and the light was in the room over the side-door."
"Second or third story?"
"Sist! not so loud. Why, let's see, the third."
"Yes," said Haines, "don't you see the window's open up there. None of the family would do that. Town people would never air——"
"Listen!"
A whistle came from the silent distance, the first bar from "Rumski Ho," then a silence, then the same bar repeated. And by this they knew that the proctor had walked into the open space and out of it again, and that if they hurried they could put the ladder against the house, send a man up it and take it away again beforethe proctor crossed the open space once more.
Buckley started up. The others leaned against the bottom round to steady it. Then he came back for a moment. "Don't take it away until I get all the way in—until I wave my hand. There's plenty of time. Keep cool," he whispered, as he nimbly began his ascent. For his descent he was to rely upon the stairs, the freshman, and his own persuasive powers, for what are freshmen and stairs made for?
Buckley was a right devilish young man, and typically a sophomore. The year before he had climbed the belfry of old North and stolen the bell-clapper and gained class-wide renown. Already this term he had mounted the water-tower and painted the freshman numerals green. The very night before this he had run around the eaves of Reunion, which is no easy trick, with "Bill," the night proctor, behind him, and when he dropped off the bottom round of the fire-escape into the arms of another proctor, he had wriggled out again. Still there are sensations peculiar to scaling a ladder stretching toward the black of an open window, with a moon throwing shadows of yourself and the rounds of the ladder against the dull bricks of an old-fashionedhouse, while old North strikes two in the distance. Buckley felt them.
The ladder did not quite reach, and he had to stand on the top round and stretch for the sill. Then he pulled himself up, got one foot over, took a longer grip on the inside of the window, dragged the other foot up, as you would climb a high board fence, and was in the room with both feet. He leaned out and waved his hand. The top of the ladder silently swung out from the wall and swooped down in silence. Buckley turned and started across the room.
He could feel the heavier atmosphere of indoors. A small clock was ticking somewhere. He detected a faint scent of mouchoir powder, and was just remarking to himself half consciously that it was just like that pretty-faced freshman, when from somewhere there came a soft voice, saying, "Is that you, dear?"
Then, before all the blood near his backbone had time to freeze into little splinters of ice, he said, "Shsss," and stepped out of the moonlight and into the shadow, which is the best thing to do in case you are ever in a similar situation. Buckley's instinct made him do it.
Across the silence the soft voice floated again and mingled with the moonlight, "Oh, I'm not asleep. But why did you stay so long, Guy,dear?" There was another sound. It was the squeaking of a bed-spring.
Then, as Buckley's knees stiffened tight against each other, he spied coming toward him something white, with two black streaks hanging half way down, which as the thing came into the moonlight, he saw to be long braids of dark hair. Also, the light showed a tall, slender figure clothed in but one garment, which was white, and a face which was young and beautiful. Buckley had never seen a woman dressed that way before, and he closed his eyes.
But he felt it coming nearer and nearer. He stood up perfectly straight and rigid in the darkness as two arms reached up and met about his neck. The arms were soft, and they smelt good.
Buckley did not budge, and the soft voice began, in a sort of whisper, "You have not forgiven me yet?" It began to sob, and he felt the sobbing against his orange and black sweater. "You know I did not mean it. Won't you—forgive her? Won't you forgive—her?" And Buckley fully realized that he was in the thick of some romantically ghastly mistake, and that the only thing he could do to make it worse would be to speak or show his face.
For fully half a minute he stood thus motionless,with his arms at his sides, gathering himself together, and trying to think what to do. And when he had made up his mind what to do he gritted his teeth and put both arms about the Clingy Thing.
And when he had done that the Clingy Thing began to purr in soft, plaintive tones, which undoubtedly were sweet, and would probably have been appreciated by Buckley if he had not been so rattled. "Tell me that youdoforgive me. Say it with your own lips."
Buckley said nothing with his lips. He was biting them.
"Guy, speak to me!"
Buckley didn't.
"Speak to me, my husband!" A soft, fragrant hand came gently up along his cheek, which tingled, and over his eyes, which quivered, and pushed back the hair from his brow, which was wet. Suddenly she raised her head, gave one look at his face with large, startled eyes, then, with a shuddering gasp, she recoiled.
But Buckley was not letting go. This is what he had been preparing for. Keeping one arm about her waist he threw the other around the neck in such a way that he could draw it tight if necessary, and said in one breath, "For heaven's sake, don't scream—I can explain!"
"Ugh! Oh, let go! Who—let me go or I'll screa-ch-ch-ch."
But Buckley didn't let her do either. He pressed on the windpipe, feeling like three or four kinds of murderers as he did so. Then, as she struggled with feeble, womanly might, Buckley did the fastest thinking he had ever done in all his nineteen years. The door of the room—was it locked? The stairs—where were they? The front door—was the night-latch above the knob? Was it below? Would it stick? All this time she would be screaming, and the house was full of men. He would be caught. He was in for something. But was he hurting her? He began to talk.
"Oh, please, if you scream it'll only make things awfully awkward. I got in here by mistake. I can explain. I'm not going to hurt you. Oh, please, keep quiet."
She tried again to wrench away from his grasp, and Buckley drew her back with ease, feeling half sorry for her poor little strength. "Promise me you'll not cry out and I'll let go."
"Yes, yes, I promise," said the scared voice. "Anything. Only let me go."
Buckley released his grasp. She fled across the room. He thought she was making for the door. He sprang toward it to keep her fromrunning downstairs and arousing the house. But she only snatched up an afghan or something from the sofa, and holding it about her retreated to the dark part of the room.
Buckley couldn't see her now, but he heard her moan, "Oh dear, oh dear!" in a muffled tone, and he felt that she must be cowering in the corner farthest away from him, and it made him have all sorts of contempt for himself. Then he talked again, standing with his back against the door and looking toward the dark. "I don't know who you are," he began in a loud, nervous whisper, "but whoever you are, I wish you wouldn't cry. Please be calm. I want to talk to you."
"I don't want to hear you—I don't want to hear you."
"Not so loud, or we'll be heard."
"Oh, oh, how can you trade upon my necessity? Haven't you a grain of manhood, a spark of kindness in you——"
"Yes, yes, lots," said Buckley. "Listen to me. Please listen. It's all a big mistake. I thought I was coming to my own room——"
"Your own room!"
"I mean my classmate's room—I mean I thought a freshman roomed here. I wouldn't have made the mistake for anything in theworld. You aren't half as sorry I got in your room as I am—Oh, yes, you are!—I mean I'm awfully sorry and wish to apologize, and I hope you'll forgive me. I didn't mean anything——"
"Mean anything!"
"Really I didn't. If you'll only let me go down and promise not to wake the house before I get out, why, no one will ever know anything about it, and I'll promise not to do it again. I'm awfully sorry it happened." Buckley started for the door.
"Mrs. Brown—Mr. Brown, help! murder!"
"Oh, for heaven's sake don't!" cried Buckley.
"I will. Just as soon as I get breath and strength enough I mean to wake the house, the neighbors, the whole town if I can."
"No, you won't!" Buckley started across the room.
"Stop!" she cried.
He stopped. The voice was commanding. It seemed already quite strong enough to scream. He said: "You promised not to scream."
"But you forced me to promise."
"Are you going to scream?"
"I am." She was getting her breath.
"Oh, don't; please don't. If I wanted to, I could hurt you. I don't want to hurt you. Ah, have pity on me!"
The bold, bad sophomore was down on his knees, with his hands clasped toward the dark, where the voice came from. He was very sorry for himself.
"You stay right there in the moonlight."
"Right here?"
"Right there. And if you dare to move, I'll scream with all my might."
Buckley first shivered and then froze as stiff as if a hair-trigger rifle were pointing at him. "How long must I stay here?" he asked, without moving his head.
"Until my hus— Until daylight," returned the voice.
"Until daylight!" repeated Buckley. There was something impressive in the deep, rich voice of this tall young woman, and whoever she was, Buckley could tell, from the refined tones, that she was a lady. He could just make out the gleam of her face and of one arm in the dark corner.
Outside, the crickets were scratching in the warm, still night. It was after two o'clock. A moon was shining in his left eye. And he, William Buckley, was kneeling, with his hands stretched imploringly toward a girl whom he had never seen before, in the third story of an old-fashioned Princeton house, which he had enteredfor the first time by a ladder which, by this time, was resting serenely against a freshly painted house in Mercer Street, whither it had been borne by four classmates, who were now at the corner of Canal and Dickinson Streets, as per agreement, and cursing him for taking such a long time to pull one small freshman out of bed. Meanwhile, the moon was approaching the window-post.
"Please, oh, please, whoever you are," he began, in earnest, pleading tones, "won't you forgive me, and let me go?"
There was no answer.
"I am a gentleman. Indeed I am! I wouldn't harm a girl for the world. Please let me go. I'll be fired—I mean expelled from college for this. I'll be disgraced for life. I'll——"
"Stop!" The voice seemed to be calm now. "While it may be true that you did not break into my room with intent to rob or injure a defenceless woman, yet, by your own confession, you came to torment a weaker person. You wanted to haze one of the freshmen in this house; that was it. And when my husband——"
"Oh, have mercy on me. Won't you have mercy?" Then he began to tell her what a good boy he had always been, and how he had always gone to church, and how fond his mother was ofhim, and that he was the pride and ambition of the family, and similar rot, showing how completely scared to death he was. "Just think what this means to me," he concluded. "If I'm fired from college, I'll never come back. I'll be disgraced for life. All my prospects will be blighted, my life ruined, and my mother's heart broken."
She gave a little hysterical sob, as if the strain were too great for her. "Yes, for your poor mother's sake; yes, go!" she exclaimed.
"Oh, thank you with all my heart. My mother would, too, if she could know. I don't deserve to be treated so well. I shall always think of you as my merciful benefactress. I can never forgive myself for causing you pain. Oh, thank you."
Buckley, the sophomore, who had strode into that room so manfully, in the full pride of his sophomorish strength and orange and black, grovelled across the room and out of the door, then tip-toed his way down the hall stairs, silently pulled back the latch of the front door, and sneaked off, with his tail between his legs.
The outside air did him good, and by the time he reached his impatient class-mates he had thought up a fairly good lie about the freshman's being ill, quite seriously ill, and about hisstopping to look after him a bit, which they admitted was the only thing to do under the circumstances, though it was blamed hard lines, after all the trouble they had taken. "Better luck next time, Buck," they said, and went to bed.
By the ten o'clock mail next morning Buckley received a letter in strange handwriting. It said: "Just as a tall woman looks short in a man's make-up, so does a short man look tall in a woman's make-up, and you should know that blondes are hard to recognize in brunette wigs. I could have done more artistic acting if you had come up earlier, when I had on my full costume. You ought to know that a real girl wouldn't have behaved quite that way. You see you still have a number of things to learn, even though you are a soph. Sort of hard luck, all this, isn't it, old man? Hoping that the rouge will wash off your lips and that you will learn to forgive yourself, I am your merciful benefactress, H. G. Valliant."
This is the freshest thing I ever heard of.
There was a P. S. which said: "Whether or not this thing gets out rests entirely with you and your hazing friends."
Of course it did get out, as all such things do; but Valliant was not bothered again bysophomores, though he ought to have been hazed up and down and inside-out and cross-wise by the whole college.
You can see him if you attend the next production of the Dramatic Association.
Near Old Chapel he used to linger on the way from recitations, buying things from old black Jimmie and pretending to be amused by his stuttering conversation while he watched the passers-by. And when The One came along for whom he waited, he said to himself, "Oh, he's wearing his brown shooting-coat to-day," and turned and gazed after him until out of sight, wondering what lecture he had at that hour and how he would get along at it. Then passing on slowly across the campus he turned out upon the street.
When he reached his room, Darnell said to another freshman that lived in the house, "I saw Lawrence to-day. He was walking with his arm around Nolan. He passed right by me." And he could also have told just how he nodded to the fellows along the walk and how he swung his legs. Darnell thought that Lawrence's gait was just right. So was his manner of dressing. Somehow Darnell could not make his corduroy coat hang in that way. It layback all right, but it would not stay snugly up on his shoulders as Lawrence's did.
He used to see him quite often now, for by this time he had learned at what hours Lawrence's lectures came. Which was more than the senior himself knew, for he had always to look at the schedule tacked up on the back of the door over the faculty and absence committee summonses.
Darnell remembered the first time he saw Lawrence. It was on the morning of the first day of the term, while he was sitting in the office of the old Nassau Hotel, quietly waiting for his mother and trying not to appear green and thinking that everyone who came in was a sophomore and wanted him. It was raining, he remembered, and people came scurrying in with their trousers turned up and mackintoshes on. Lawrence came in alone.
He came with his impressive stride and a very long paddock coat and a new kind of shooting-cap which he brought back with him from Piccadilly the first of the month. He frowned and glanced about the room. And when he found the two faces he was looking for and strode across to where a worried-faced gentleman in a silk hat was reading the paper beside a freshman with a grinning face, he said, holding outhis hand, "So you have arrived." It was just the patrician tone of voice that Darnell had expected when he saw the face.
When Lawrence stretched out his hand his long coat fell open and disclosed an orange monogram of many closely intertwined letters shining against the black of his undercoat. It was worked upon the breast-pocket, and the freshman wondered what that mysterious insignia might mean.
He watched him as he jerked his head and blew smoke in the damp air. The way he tossed the ashes away was perfect. And when Lawrence suddenly turned and, looking frankly in the freshman's father's eyes, said with a reserved smile, "You need not worry about that, Mr. Jansen," and stretched an arm about the freshman's shoulder, Darnell thought he would rather be that freshman than anyone in the world—except the owner of the arm.
Then he began to speak again, and Darnell found himself leaning forward a little. He remembered thinking, "I don't care if it is impolite to listen."
Lawrence said in a rapid manner, without opening his teeth very wide, "The team? We brought them down from the island last evening. Sea air is a good tonic to begin a season's trainingwith, and they are all in excellent shape. Billy, you must bring your father down to the field to see my big brown babies." Darnell remembered every word, though he did not understand quite what it meant at the time.
Soon after getting settled he took pains to pick up an acquaintance with this freshman. That was the time he first found out that the senior was one of the Lawrences. The freshman said, "Yes, he's a mighty fine fellow. He played on his class eleven in his freshman year." But that was all Jansen said. He did not enthuse as he should have. He had no more than the ordinary fear and reverence of a freshman for a senior. There was a man on the team named Stehman. He was the one this freshman turned and gazed after on the campus.
But now Darnell knew more about him than Jansen did. From the last year's "Bric-a-brac" he had learned the senior's club and what committees he was on, and the book opened up now, of its own accord, to the picture of the Glee Club. He could have told you Lawrence's middle name and his street and number at home, and his campus address as well. Whenever the freshman went to night session of Hall he looked up as he went by to see if the room in West were lighted, and he wondered what he was doingup there behind those curtains. Once, while passing by, some one was calling "Hello-o-o, Harry Lawrence!" and in Lawrence's own voice came a muffled "Hello! Come up." It did not seem quite right for them to be noisy and familiar with Lawrence as with ordinary fellows. He did not understand how Lawrence allowed it.
In Jansen's room it was, and Old North was ringing curfew, when Lawrence shook his hand and said in his peculiar throaty voice, "Glad to know you," or else "Glad to meet you." He never could be certain which it was. It was on a Tuesday evening, and he had made a poor recitation in algebra that day. He noticed that Lawrence was only about an inch taller than himself.
Darnell looked straight back at him and said, "I think I have heard my sister speak of you, Mr. Lawrence. She met you down here at the sophomore reception last June." His voice was perfectly firm and strong, but his mouth persisted in drooping a little at the corners. He could not help that.
Lawrence said, "Yes, I remember very well," which delighted the freshman's sister Louise, when Darnell wrote to her about it, just as much as if it had been true. "Is your sister comingdown to any of the dances this year?" added the senior.
"No, I don't believe she is. My aunt brought a whole crowd down that time. Mamma was on the other side, or she would not have allowed it. Louise is not out yet." Then he dropped his big brown eyes and blushed because he felt that he was talking too much and because he had said "mamma" before the senior.
But Lawrence was only looking grave and interested and well-bred, and he replied, "I see. That's too bad. I wish she could come."
"Yes," said Darnell, "I wish she could come," and then, although he did not want to, he arose to go, because he thought that Lawrence wished to talk confidentially with his freshman, Jansen.
Lawrence, who did not care about his going, because he found it as easy to talk to two freshmen as to one, said, "I hope I'm not driving you out, Bonnell. Good-night. If your sister should decide to come down this year, don't forget to let me have a chance at her card before it's filled. Good-night, Bonnell."
"Oh, I won't," said the freshman. "Good-night."
As if he could forget. As if he would be allowed to forget, indeed! She, dear little thing, in her own becoming little way, worshippedhim, too. And at Mrs. Somebody's School in Somethingtieth Street, she used to slip an arm about the waist of her latest everlasting friend, and whisper something about it on the way upstairs after prayers.
During her evening's acquaintance with him in June she had told the great, dark, wonderful man that had "a whole tragedy in his face," "a certain indefinable something" in his manner, and many other things, too, no doubt, that she had a brother who was coming to college the next fall, and she asked Lawrence in a very timid, pretty, natural manner if he would please look out for her brother, who would be a freshman and only sixteen years old. And Lawrence, who was watching the way she held her head and approving of it, said, "Of course I will," and forgot about it during the next dance, which was with a Newark girl, who asked him how the Sunday night hot-liquor club was prospering. That was last June.
To be sure Lawrence did not get his name just right, but then many people did not come that near when they first heard it. Besides, what of that? Had he not looked at him and addressed him twice? That was more than most freshmen could say.
But it hurt a little the next day, when Darnellchanged his mind about going to the library because he saw that if he kept on up the walk he would meet Lawrence coming toward Dickinson's with three other seniors. For he received only an absent-minded glance without the movement of an eyelash. But you could not expect Lawrence to remember all the people he met. And, perhaps, he was worshipped all the more for it.
On Sunday he used to gaze with his big brown eyes from his seat in the freshman section way over through the juniors and past some of the seniors, back to Lawrence's place. Sometimes a big head of football hair was in the way, so that he could not tell whether he was there. He was absent so frequently. But when they all arose to sing the first hymn, then he could see, and then he would recall what the football column in the paper he had been reading before chapel reported that "President Lawrence" had done or said, and he wondered whether he himself had read it and how it felt to see one's own words in type.
He seldom joined in the singing, Darnell noticed, unless it was "Ein Feste Burg" or "Lead, Kindly Light," and though he could not tell why, Darnell admired him all the more for his not singing every time. At any rate, it wasjust like him to stand there with his hands in his pockets and his aristocratic head thrown back and look dark and grave and mysterious. He always looked especially so, Darnell thought, in chapel. His mien seemed to be haughty and kingly, not merely dignified and exclusive like that of many upper-classmen. Lawrence when a freshman could never have been hazed or guyed. He could not imagine him stooping to haze anyone either.
Lawrence could do anything. Anyone could see that from his eyes and chin and the straight, firm mouth with the thin lips. Darnell knew very well that Lawrence could stand high in his class if he wanted to. Probably he could play football. He was built well enough. Darnell thought it would not be quite Lawrence's style to play football. He would hate to see him tackled or rolling in the mud. That would never do for him. Lawrence, he thought, would not have played on the team if he were asked. Darnell had been a Princeton man less than a month.
But he had what was far better than playing on the team—the management of it. And he was just right as he was. He was a dignified, weighty senior, respected by all and feared by many, no doubt, and a man, not a boy, who had travelled much and lived much and had had all sorts ofexperiences in his younger days. He was old now, nearly twenty-two.
But the most wonderful thing about him was his composure and his commanding reserve. He had the look of the gentleman. His manner seemed altogether impervious to excitement. He was master of every situation. To have such a man in their classes must have been rather embarrassing to the professors. Darnell supposed that the other Lawrences were rather afraid of him when he came home.
His perfect command of himself and of everyone and of everything about him was what most impressed the freshman. That was the reason that when his idol fell, it jarred him.
On Thanksgiving evening his head was throbbing and his ears ringing with the echo of horns and cheers, and before his eyes were flashing little kodak recollections of how the line looked when the ball was put in play, and how the crowd waved and yelled when the full-back tried for a goal. But there was a lot of aunts and cousins and things-in-law for dinner, whom he had to kiss and smile at when they said, "How you have grown!" He wanted to get near some class-mate and put his arm about him and talk it all over, like any other healthyyoung man after the game. And, as early as he decently could, he slipped on his big new coat and stole out by the basement door.
He walked down the avenue to Madison Square, getting jostled and excited once more. Noisy gangs of fours and eights and dozens were marching and dancing along the street. Some wore orange, others blue. Some were students at various colleges, most of them had never seen one.
He went into the Hoffman. Closely packed streams of men were crowding in and out. The air was hot and there was a confused din of many voices. He worked his way to the end of the glaring room, but saw none of his intimates and but few fellows that he had ever seen before. Most of the crowd were of the sort he had seen on the street, young men of the town with college ribbons all over them, and such boisterous noises grated on him, so he started out again. Some hoarse cheering and husky laughter made him turn and look toward the corner where the throng was thickest. Then he hurriedly pushed his way through the crowd to gain a nearer view of what he saw upon the table.
He tried to persuade himself that it was someone else. He did not understand how he could be among people of this sort.
But there was no mistaking that mouth, though he had never seen the hair hanging down that way, nor the eyes as they were now. About the neck was the rim of a hat.
Suddenly two other fellows brushed past Darnell. He looked up and thought he remembered having seen their faces on the campus. They seemed to be excited, and they wedged their way roughly through the crowd to the table. "Leave him alone," one of them was calling out above the din. Brushing aside some slight interference, they picked up the heap from the table, half carried it through the crowd, saying, as they went along, "You're all right, Harry. Brace up, Harry, you're all right," and paying no attention to the crowd, they hurried across the room to the Twenty-fourth Street entrance and disappeared.
For a moment the freshman only stared at a long, tall clock and wondered. Then he suddenly turned and hurried out into the street.
It was no affair of his. The others were there. They were the ones to take care of him. But the electric light had given him one glimpse, and for the moment it was very revolting. He turned and walked slowly home.
He tried to reason himself out of it. It was nothing to feel so queer over. It was not sucha terrible thing, after all, especially after having the game turn out as it did. Most every young man was indiscreet at some time or other. Lawrence was a young man like many others, only he happened to have been indiscreet under unfortunate circumstances. That was all. It seemed worse than it really was.
But he did not want Lawrence to be like others. That was just the point. If it had been someone else he would not have cared. But for Harry Lawrence, Lawrence the superb, his Lawrence, there in that glaring place—jeered at and made a fool of—by that mob of muckers. It was all wrong.
"Well," he said to himself, as he went upstairs to his room, "I suppose I'm too much of a kid, and I'll have to get over my kid ways of looking at things. The sooner the better."
But all the same, it hurt, and when he was dropping off to sleep, he was startled into wakefulness again by one of those queer, sudden pangs which make one ask, "What is it I've lost?"
I
Many fellows seem to think that all an athletic officer has to do is to look important and travel about the United States with his team and make out a bill for expenses.
It's easy enough to carry a japanned tin box, and sell tickets through a hole where the wind blows, as treasurer. As president it is a fine thing to make frequent trips to New York, and attend conclaves that are secret, and make speeches in conventions and read your opinions next morning in the paper in fine long sentences prefixed with "President So-and-so said last night," and to be lunched by famous authorities and interviewed by rapacious reporters who think that because the public supports football they have a right to see all the inside workings of intercollegiate diplomacy. All this is the pretty part of it.
But like all greatness there is a deal of hard hustling and perspiration and discouragement and annoyance underneath. So much so, that one seldom has time to tell himself how fine a thing it is to wear a 'varsity blazer with the orange monogram on the breast-pocket. And this is usually heavy with bills to pay and memoranda of things to see to. Besides, the responsibility is tremendous.
H. Lawrence, Ninety Blank, had blood-shot eyes this morning, and he hurried down the clattering iron stairs of West College tying his neck-tie. As the ugly entry door slammed behind him he did not put his hands in his pockets and begin to whistle, as he used to do in under-classman days, because he was not sauntering over to Reunion to smoke a pipe, or down to Witherspoon to loaf until the next lecture. He glanced at the clock in old North tower and hit up his pace.
He had given orders to the team to be at the station with their grips packed at 9.38, and before that time he had to wire a member of the Graduate Advisory Committee, asking where he could find him that evening, and to an official of the Manhattan Athletic Club that he should not be able to consider his propositionat present, and to the manager of a Southern college football team that he regretted that all Princeton's open dates were now filled, and to the Jersey City Station restaurant to prepare a luncheon of training food for twenty men, and not to roast the beef to death this time. After that he would have to call upon the dean and find out whether the faculty had decided to let Harrison play football or not, and find and be nice to another member of the faculty who was indignant because seventeen grand stand tickets had not been saved for him and his wife's relatives at the last Saturday's game, and then hurry to the station by way of the bank, where he would ask if they had heard anything more about that protested check, while he was making a good one out for himself, and then see to it that all the team and subs were flocked together and pushed into the train and made to stay there until told to get out and play football. Some of which would have been more properly the duties of Sinclair, the treasurer, who was not catching on as rapidly as Lawrence thought he should.
He took long, strong strides and looked straight ahead of him, which was in the direction of an old shop opposite the gate, with a picturesquely warped roof which he did not see.
He did not see the fellows along the walk either, and those he did not cut he nodded to absently without removing his frown. This caused certain passers-by to shake their heads and say, "Harry Lawrence is getting a swelled head since he's become so important," especially those who greatly wanted to be important themselves but weren't, and so had plenty of time to criticise those who were.
But Lawrence, with a half dozen unopened letters in his pocket which he would read on the train going up, did not dream of being criticised. And if he had he would not have felt very badly about it. He did not have time.
Nor would he have had time to stop and thank his good friends Nolan and Linton, who, when Lawrence had rushed by with one of those "How-do's" which make one think that one's name has been forgotten, had looked worried and then said, "Harry'll kill himself before the end of the season," while Lawrence tore open a telegram with which the boy met him in front of College Offices and hurried on. He had no time for breakfast, because the man had forgotten to wake him, and the night before he had been handling the files of applications for the Thanksgiving game seats with Sinclair and dictating to a stenographer until 2A.M.
Every evening from eight until midnight there was a reception in his room, with Sinclair to help receive. It began when they came in from the club after dinner, with a workman or two from the town waiting in the entry, who touched their hats and said, "Please, sir, Mr. McMaster says this bill is correct." Then would come members of the team who wanted the management to remove conditions for them, and coachers who wanted to talk serious business and had but a short time to spare, and some of the fellows who wanted to smoke and chat and seemed hurt when told to get out; and in addition, the hordes of applicants for seats, who kept running in and out, incessantly buzzing in the management's ears like flies, and just as pestiferously merciless, from eight until twelve, when the door was locked.
These represented all phases of college life, from the professor who "never incurred any difficulty in getting all the seats he wanted in previous years" to the young freshman whose mother knew the management's mother, and thought he might be especially considered for that reason, and including class-mates who made it a personal matter of friendship, and thought they ought to be considered ahead of mere strangers for that reason. Also emissaries froma certain woman's college, who must have tickets before they are put on sale, because the poor, timid girls could not stand in line with all those men, and cousins of members of the team, and many others, all of whom furnished an excellent reason for being entitled to just a little more consideration than anyone else. None of which counted them anything in Lawrence's reign.
But this was not what made Lawrence scowl and look fierce as he hurried by a little, wistful-eyed freshman, whom he did not see, and who had been hoping all the way from the First Church gate to the dean's that maybe this time the senior would recognize him. Lawrence was used to all this, and he liked it. He liked having a lot of things to attend to in a short time, to see many people and give orders and talk fast and feel his brain warm with quick thinking. He enjoyed responsibility, and he thought it was thrilling to get in a situation and then take a long breath, so to speak, and command it. Nor was he too old to fully appreciate his privilege of being on intimate terms with ancient heroes of the football field, and he was glad to be thrown with so many other prominent alumni. And he took great satisfaction in watching the long-headed Advisorymen begin to acknowledge by their attitude that although an undergraduate he had reliable executive ability and somewhat of independent resource besides. One of them clapped him on the back one day and said, "Good! That's the proposition we'll make 'em," and added, "You are your father's own son, Lawrence."
Except that he would have liked to have a little time to loaf and enjoy life, he was quite well pleased with being president of the P. U. F. B. A., and did not care a rap whether the college considered him arrogant or not. He was attending to his own business and had the satisfaction of knowing that he was doing it rather well, with the attendant satisfaction of having had the honorable position given him by the vote of the college body without his or his friends' boot-licking one of them for it. And that is one of the most satisfactory feelings in the world.
The thing that troubled him was a letter in his pocket. That was the reason that when the ninth old grad. approached him on the field and said, "Say, Lawrence, just between us now, what do you think of the chances with Yale?" he replied, curtly, "How do I know?" and hurried on up the side lines. This was decidedly fresh, and he jumped on himself afterwardbecause he did not believe in letting private affairs interfere with business. Usually he could stand a dozen old graduates.
The letter had come the day before. It was from his father and enclosed Lawrence's November allowance. He never received but one letter a month from the governor, and it nearly always contained two statements: "Enclosed please find ..." and "Your mother and all are well," both of which make very agreeable reading.
This time the letter was not dictated, but written in the Colonel's own small, straight hand, and there was an extra paragraph. It ran thus: "Had I known what this official position of yours involved, the amount of time, the number and variety of interruptions, and the vulgar prominence that your name and movements occupy in the press, I should never have given my consent, which, as you may remember, I did reluctantly, to your acceptance of it. In my opinion what you are learning at college could better be acquired at home: a little of business down-town with me, yourother accomplishmentsup-town in the clubs and other places with your friends." This was not the sort of letter to do any good.
"'Your other accomplishments'—now whatthe devil does he mean by that, I wonder?" thought Lawrence. And then he folded the letter and tossed it into a pigeon-hole marked "Unanswered," and turned his attention upon a large blue-print marked "Stand B" and tried to assure himself that the reason his mind kept jumping back to pigeon-hole "Unanswered" was because he was sorry at being too busy to study, and disliked having such a low stand in class. But it wasn't his class standing that kept him awake until old North struck five.
After this when in New York he did not go up-town to dine with the family as often as formerly. When he did his father merely said, "Judge Hitchcock told me he saw you on Broadway last Wednesday," and similar remarks in a casual tone.
"Yes, sir," Harry would reply, with his attention on the crest on his plate.
Then each would wonder what the other meant, until Helen would interrupt with, "By the way, I saw by theTribunethis morning that 'President Lawrence of Princeton' says that Yale will beat Harvard at Springfield. So it's all right then, Winston." He was her husband, Yale '86, and Helen was a good sister, who had a large intuition and knew things.
On Thanksgiving Day the College of NewJersey went up to New York feeling quite certain of winning the game. The alumni said we would win. The heelers doubled their bets. The coachers were sure we'd win. Most of the authorities conceded the victory to Princeton. The team were confident of winning. Yale won.
During the dinner after the game, Lawrence was dignified and silent. People thought he was rattled, if anyone thought about anything else than the one big, sad fact. He presided gracefully though. He was very good to look at. The dinner, which is usually very long, was wound up early, few being unwilling, and Lawrence helped put one of the blubbering backs to bed who had taken too much for a training stomach and head. Then he went downstairs, saying, "Now, then, my responsibility is over with. I am going to have a good time."
II
He had done it hard because he did everything hard. It had lasted several days and ended in a hospital in West Philadelphia, where he had three stitches put in his forehead. Now he was back in his old room in West College, with a pipe in his mouth, drumming on the arms of his chair and staring straight at his feet, which were upon the roller-top desk. Dark rings were under his eyes and he told himself that he had had a good time.
He was thinking that it was quite a storybook coincidence that they should have come together, those two letters. They were so different and yet so much the complement of each other.
The first was from his father. He had torn it open with his pen, as he would any other letter, and though he saw that it was several pages in length and knew intuitively that it would not be like any other letter he had ever read, he had deliberately rolled up the envelope to get a light for his pipe from the fire, and he had stretchedout in the chair again as he was before, with his legs sprawled out in front and elbows resting on the arms, holding the letter before his face.
Then he had commenced to smoke very hard, and presently stopped rocking back and forth as he read the words written in that clear, even hand, without a flourish or a superfluous mark, words that had caused him to gnaw the mouth-piece of his pipe as they burned their way into him. And all the while he pictured to himself a tall figure in a smoking-jacket trimmed with white braid sitting up straight and rigid at his desk in the corner of the cosey inner room of the office in William Street, and recalled how once, when an absconding clerk had left a temporary cloud on the name of the firm, the old, steely eyes had flashed under the lowering brows as the old gentleman had taken his seat at the breakfast-table, where he ate nothing.
The letter sounded very like the governor. There was no mistaking its meaning. It was a succinct and comprehensive report of dissatisfaction at the younger Lawrence's methods, with a list of debts of filial affection and memoranda of overdraws on parental patience covering the last three years, and accompanied by a brief prospectus for the unpromising future. It was the sort of a letter he would have fancied astately old gentleman like his father that was proud of his name writing to a son like himself that had disgraced it.
Only it would have been just as well, Lawrence thought, to have omitted that part of the letter. He was quite willing to admit most of the hard things his father said of him because they were facts, but this about dishonorable cowardice and the family name was going a little too far, and he told himself that he did not quite see how he could stand that from anyone. And he sat up straight and pressed hard on the arms of his chair and looked very like the indignant old Colonel who had written the words.
It was uncalled for, it was unjust, it was ridiculous. If his father would stop to think of things as they really were in this world, thought Lawrence, Ninety Blank, these little shortcomings of his would not appear a bit worse than those of some of the very same young men in town whose industry and clean business ability the Colonel so much admired, and whom he spoke of as the hope or flower or something of Manhattan's commercial supremacy or something.
It was merely that he happened to be indiscreet the last time he was having a good time. He had made a little too much noise, and theecho had reached a number of people in town. That was all. It was hard luck, but it did not amount to enough to become dramatic over. Merely because his great-grandfather did something and his grandfather was something was no reason, as far as he could see, why the Lawrences should have unique moral standards. The governor was certainly getting old.
Then he had carefully arranged the leaves of the letter in order, mechanically folded and put them in a pigeon-hole of the desk, and opened and spread out the other letter before him. But he did so unconsciously, for he was staring straight out ahead of him into the face of the future, which had expressionless features. His father had concluded with "Signify to me at once your intention of a complete change in your career, or, notwithstanding your nearness to graduation, I shall take you out of college and put you at work in Van Brunt's." That is not the way a boy likes to be written to.
"Oh, no, I don't think I'd do all that if I were you." He could not abide his father's tone when he spoke oftakinghim out of college orputtinghim at work, or doing anything with him. He was still young enough not to fancy being considered young.
And then the actuality of the situation occurredto him, and he was reminded that although twenty-one he had not a cent of his own, and that there was no place in the world to go to or a thing that he could do to make money enough to even pay his debts.
"Picture of a young man taken out of college because he is bad." He smiled broadly at himself in the glass over the mantelpiece. But it wasn't very funny.
And it was at this point that he dropped his eyes to read his father's words once more, and was startled for an instant to see a strange handwriting, and then remembered the other letter. He was again startled by the first words that met his glance. "Haven't you had enough of college?" At the top of the paper was the name of a La Salle Street, Chicago, firm. It was not so very queer after all. It was only that it was so startlingly apropos. He read the letter in eager gulps. Then he read it again.
It was from his friend Clark, who had been so kind to him when he was out there. And now he was still more kind. It was singular that the offer should come just now, on that very day, at that very hour. He would wire back his acceptance that afternoon. "Now, of course, it is too bad to make you stop in the middle of your last year," the letter ran, "butwe can't hold it open after the first of January. I know what a big concession you consider it for a New Yorker to come to Chicago, but you know better than to be prejudiced. You know the crowd you'll blow with and the clubs you'll be in, and as the situation is something extraordinary to be offered to so young a man, I hope you'll wire me your acceptance at once. The mature judgment you showed in conducting...." These words came to his heated brain like a cool lake-breeze. This was what he wanted more than anything else in the world just now, to get away from his present surroundings, and to start anew, where he would be his own master, making his own money and disposing of it as it suited him, and responsible to no one for the use he made of it or his time. He wanted to be free.
The bell in Old North broke in on him. He looked at the clock on the mantelpiece, and was surprised to see that it was only four, and that it must have been but a half hour since he received those two letters. Then he remembered that he had a lecture at that hour. It made him smile to think of it.
But, it occurred to him, it would be a right good idea to go—he would be going to few enough more—anything to get out of the closeatmosphere of the room and interrupt the current of his thought. For his thoughts were chasing each other about in a circle, and they would not stop, although he pressed his forehead with both hands, as he used to do during the football season. Lately his brain had taken to behaving in a very queer manner, and a fellow he knew at the College of Physicians and Surgeons had told him that if he did not stop worrying about things he would have neurasthenia or something as ugly sounding as that.
As he opened the entry door and stepped out into the open air of the campus, the old bell began throbbing, clear and strong, in his ears. It somehow recalled freshman year and how he used to run to reach his seat before it stopped ringing.
He was in the crowded quadrangle now, with fellows all about him with books or note-books under their arms, whistling and singing and hallooing and scraping their feet along the walks just as they had always done. Over in front of Reunion was the usual crowd kicking football and squabbling over their points. The side over by College Offices was shouting exultingly "Nine to seven!" and a fellow on the side near by was announcing with equal conviction, as he turned the ball over in hishands to punt, "Eight to seven." Lawrence found himself saying "Eight to seven," and mechanically watched the ball as it sailed through the air and lodged up in one of the second-story balconies, and stopped to listen to them set up the cry, just as he knew they were going to, "Thank you, up there, please, thank you-u-u!"
It struck him as queer that all this was going on just as it always had, without a single variation to show that this day was different from other days. It seemed odd to think that he was not to be a part of this any more. It somehow seemed more odd than sad. He told himself that it would be a great relief to fly far away from it all.
Down the walk came a group of his own class-mates, carelessly slouching along from lecture, laughing and joking, with their arms on one another's shoulders. It was Linton and Nolan and Stehman and others. "Hello, there, Harry!" they said and passed on down the walk. Lawrence turned and watched them. He had replied to their salute in his usual manner. It had seemed natural and his voice was in perfect imitation of heartiness, and yet he could not help thinking how little difference it would make to him if they all fell down dead. The sight of them bothered, Nolan's bow legs annoyedhim. He hoped he would never see Nolan again. And this was Billy Nolan!